ALOHA ALL: We're still inChina-DALIAN-was just an overnight from Tianjin. The geography of this port made it of interest Internationally. China still talks about the Sino-JapaneseWar like yesterday, tho it was 1894/5. Japan got Dalian-the prize- from the Qing Dynesty. Shortly thereafter, Russia got involved and took it from the JP and built a railroad to Manchuria to connect with the Trans-Siberian RR & European Russia...always looking for a Port! Imperial JP regained control of Dalian in 1904-45. The railroad served JP for invasion of...

Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Day Trip to Jinshitan and Kaifaqu
In the morning we took the light rail train from downtown Dalian north and east up the Liaodong Peninsula for about 50 minutes to reach Jinshitan. Kina will be attending the Dalian Maple Leaf International High School here in Jinshitan.
We stopped for breakfast at a little restaurant run by an expat and former Maple Leaf teacher. He and his Chinese wife served us up a hearty breakfast. From here we decided to walk down to Kina’s school. Actually, we ended up at the boy’s part of...

Monday, Aug 17, 2009-10-26
Strolling around Dalian
Well we didn’t waste much time dumping off our luggage at Suzanne and Kina’s apartment and then going out in search of a late lunch. We headed to where Suzanne knew a Subway Restaurant and Starbucks were close proximity of each other.
Subway smells the same in China, and even better, we were all happy with our meals. Next we were on to Starbucks to get some strong coffee. Actually, the coffee in China had been pretty good. A lot of places used espresso machines to create coffee.
All...

Chilliwack to Dalian, China
We left Chilliwack around 9am on Tue Aug 4th morning on the Airport Shuttle to Vancouver.
10.5 hour flight to Narita, Japan, was great, with only a bit of turbulence. Food was good and service even better. In Narita we had an overnight layover. We went to old town Narita to look at the old temples. One dates to 940 BC. It was warm and very humid in Narita.
This morning we flew to Dalian, China and spent a couple of hours at Suzanne and Kina's apartment repacking and resting. Humidity is better here and it is...

I will use this journal to keep track of my site-seeing trips and also journal my experience living in a new culture. 2 weeks have passed since I first arrived and I got my work routine down, enjoyed a few visits to an international church, and settled in my apartment. There is so much to see in China and my goal is to use each weekend and go somewhere new and take advantage of the car and driver I have. Last Saturday I went to Golden Pebble Beach and spent the day around the beach. I saw a martial arts show, a rock formation park called...

After leaving Seoul, I returned back to Dalian for another set of meetings for the balance of my trip.
Dalian, a city in the eastern Liaoning Province, is China's northernmost ice-free seaport. Metropolitan population is almost 7 million people. Although the first settlements in the area date back to the Qin and Han periods (221 B.C.-220 A.D.), Dalian only started developing in the second half of 19th century. Between 1895 and 1955 Dalian was occupied alternatively by the Japanese, Chinese and Russians. Due to limited damage suffered...

I started in Shenyang, China to review the technology for our courses taught at the university. Then on the Beijing, and to see UIBE, and the Harley Shop there. Finally, I went on to Melbourne to present at the Blackboard conference. I had great time exploring CBD and Market Square.

I'm staring up at a wall of rock. And a solider with a gun is watching me.
I've just walked the length of the Tiger Mountain Great Wall, the easternmost section of this historic fortification, outside the city of Dandong. Although "walked" is probably the wrong word. This part of the Wall is like a stretched-out Stairmaster, one steep set of stairs after another.
Just behind the Wall, the Yalu River divides China from North Korea. The river here is narrow enough that you could hop across in about three steps.
You'd think that the North...

We wait ages for the boat to take us out of the Bingyu park, then wait again as the boat makes a leisurely loop back to the main dock. We sit down on the curb to wait for the bus. And we wait. And we wait. A young woman pulls up in a shiny white car, insists that there isn't any bus, and says she'll drive us back to Zhuanghe. She wants too much money, though, so we wait some more.
After the bus finally does arrive, the driver says, "Xiao deng" ( "Short wait"), and both he and the ticket-taker vanish. By the time they return 45 minutes...

Lynn and I caught an early-morning bus from Dalian north to the town of Zhuanghe, then squeezed into a minibus headed for the Bingyu Valley. The Bingyu Valley's claim to fame is its rocky cliffs that rise up steeply from the river. The tourist trade calls it "Little Guilin" for its resemblance to the scenery in the real Guilin farther south. It's pretty, and it seems to be a popular day-trip destination for Dalian-ers.
We went for a hike, walked under (yes, under) a dam, and huffed and puffed up one of the mountains. Back at our hotel,...

If you want a glimpse of the future of Northeastern China - that is, if you want the sanitized, public relations version of the region's development - visit the Modern Museum in the seaside city of Dalian. With its exhibits about the region's real estate developments, transportation projects, technology companies, and of course, its championship soccer team, it's like a brochure come to life.
My favorite exhibit is called "Dalian, A City without Traffic Jams." I don't know who thought of this display, but it clearly wasn't someone who...

Here it is the next to last day on the ship, we get off tomorrow morning in Beijing. We took a tour in Dalian today and the guide told us this is a small town by Chinas standards, it is only 6 million people. It is a seaside resort and since it is late Oct, things were almost shut down on the beach and amusement park areas. In Shanghai it was in the 70s, here a day and a half later, it was 40 this morning and windy which felt like 35, howevere the sun was shing and we were mostly on the bus. We were unfortunate because the bus we got on was...